Age of Empires II is an old game from 1999, and the following year they released the expansion “The Conquerors.” When I got my hands on this game I played it for hours on end; it quickly became my second favorite game (the only one I love more is Chex Quest). But enough about my love for this game, let’s get to the review. I will be reviewing about the expansion only, since that was what I played and it really is the same game, only with more stuff to do.

Age of Empires II is a 2D RTS game that takes place in the Middle Ages (mostly). It has a large collection of campaigns that are about many different people over hundreds of years. The voice acting is superb, the gameplay is some of the best you can get, the terrain… it has some issues. As I said before, this is a 2D game, but the world generator has a 3D element. You can alter the landscape, and this causes problems. Like when you place walls along each other on a non-flat part of the world, the walls look kind of wonky. Moving on, being a 2D game you can probably imagine that by today’s game standards Age of Empire’s graphics aren’t too good. I, on the other hand, love the way it looks – but I’ll let y’all decide on the graphics.

Finally the best part, Age of Empires II was recently released on Steam, in HD! And that’s not all – since it was put on Steam it now has better multiplayer compatibility and access to the Steam workshop! So you can download mods and even more HD skin packs for the game (if you want to). The game currently costs $19.99 on Steam; personally I don’t think it’s worth that price. I bought it for $10 during the summer sale (which I believe to be a much fairer price). But again, I’ll let you decide.

In conclusion, this game is by far one of the best I’ve played and I would recommend buying it if you love RTS games. P.S. If you decide to buy the game, while playing singleplayer press enter and type in “how do you turn this on?” Trust me, it’s worth it. —Super Searcher